<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Good God, That's True Love by MegGiry_Khaleesi</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25660576">Good God, That's True Love</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/MegGiry_Khaleesi/pseuds/MegGiry_Khaleesi'>MegGiry_Khaleesi</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Wife From Another Life [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Batman (Comics), Batman: The Animated Series, Batman: The Killing Joke (Comics), Dr. Katz Professional Therapist (Cartoon), Harley Quinn (Cartoon 2019), Rick and Morty</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, F/M, Romance, Science Fiction, established harlivy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 03:07:17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>8,398</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25660576</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/MegGiry_Khaleesi/pseuds/MegGiry_Khaleesi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A short story about interdimensional true love, Joker style. Plot takes place in the Harley Quinn Animated Series universe, but a lot of the characterization is based on Batman The Animated Series (1992) and the comics.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Joker (DCU)/Jeannie Kerr, Joker/Jeannie, joker/bethany</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Wife From Another Life [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1860538</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Good God, That's True Love</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They were cuddling on the couch after finishing their <i>Frasier</i> re-watch. The kids had finally settled down to bed a couple hours ago. Bethany giggled when Joker whispered that this was how he and Harley found the parademons that day, cuddling in that dank cave.</p><p>She buried her head in his shoulder, as she always did when he made her laugh in his arms.</p><p>He breathed her in, that scent of laundry detergent, skin cream, and soap, with a pinch of the spices she’d used in the paella for dinner. <i>Chanel No. Bethany.</i> He could bottle it and sell it as a perfume -- only to himself, of course. He wouldn’t share that scent with anyone else.</p><p>He whispered this idea to her now, which made her bury her head even more deeply into the crook of his neck. Her arms were tight around him, turning him into her shelter.</p><p>This, <i>this</i> was why the Joker had turned from a life of mindless crime to a life of packing school lunches and lawn mowing. Beth was a tough <i>pájaro loca</i>, it was true. He didn’t know much about his sweetheart’s past, but the way she protected the kids -- hell, the way she had protected <i>him</i> -- with a ferocity that took his breath away, all pointed to a life of obstacles overcome. However, he knew she had to work hard at maintaining that ferocity, because underneath she was the softest <i>pequeňa ave</i> in the world. She never was happier, she told him, than when she was in his arms or the kids were in hers.</p><p>And she meant it.</p><p>He kissed her on top of her head. She grumbled. “We should get to bed. I’m covering for Gale tomorrow.”</p><p>Joker growled. Fucking Gale. People were always taking advantage of Beth’s good nature, and she let them. He’d make them all pay --</p><p>He stifled a self-deprecating giggle. <i>No, no, no, Joker. That’s not how we do it these days.</i></p><p>After the dust had settled from that fateful day when he, the Joker, went ahead and professed his love to this frazzled suburban mom, they had a frank talk on this very couch.</p><p>“Listen up, <i>mi amor.</i> I’m a mom first and your girlfriend second, <i>lo tienes?</i>”</p><p>“Yes, ma’am.”</p><p>“Good. Those kids are my priority. I can’t have some psycho risking their lives.”</p><p>“Hey, I’d never --”</p><p>“I’m not done. Here’s what you’re gonna do in order to make this work: one, you gotta go to therapy, baby.”</p><p>He sputtered indignantly. “<i>Therapy?</i> Me, the Joker?”</p><p>“Yes, you, the Joker! <i>Because</i> you’re the Joker,  you <i>bufón!</i> And you gotta do it for real this time. No seducing the doc for a hall pass, like you did all those years to that nice Harley girl.”</p><p>It didn’t take long before Harley and Ivy started referring to Beth as their “mom friend”, often coming to her to mediate during a lover’s quarrel. <i>Figures Harley would get Beth on her side. Lousy interfering former henchwench.</i></p><p>Beth still wasn’t done. “Second? All right, so you’re a killer. I’ve been around long enough to understand the way the world works. I know that there are some people that...ah, <i>¿Cuál es una buena manera de decir esto?</i>...some people out there who have it coming.” Those brown eyes met his. “But <i>querido</i>, did you know there are three convicted pedophiles within six blocks of this house? There are a bunch of alt-right neo-nazis just down the street!”</p><p>Joker was...taken aback, to say the least. “You mean...you <i>want</i> me to kill them?” He laughed. “Baby! You’re more of a firebrand than even I realized!”</p><p>Beth sighed, closing her eyes. “I’m no saint, it's true. Life’s made me worse than I should be. But I’m not heartless. If you could just...let yourself be known to these scumbags...maybe it would be enough to keep them in line?” A hopeful smile turned up the corners of her mouth. It weakened him.  </p><p>He loved being a STAHD (an acronym for Stay-At-Home-Dad he picked up from the numerous parenting message boards he now frequented), but that was his day job. His night job consisted of studying neighborhood maps, narrowing in on addresses of pedos, rapists, and the like who got off on technicalities. You know, anyone who hadn’t made any true effort to reform, or who were at high risk of repeat offense, or had already indulged themselves again, that kind of creep.</p><p>He'd plant a kiss on sleeping Beth's cheek and off he’d slip into the night, arsenal of Joker Toxin and sundry weapons in tow.</p><p>Did he always use them? No, of course not. He tried not to. He just made sure to slip into a child molester’s domicile, or a KKK enthusiast’s, tie ‘em up, let ‘em know he was onto them. Maybe slap them around a little, or get them convulsing with laughter from just a touch of his toxin.</p><p>(Okay, once he couldn’t keep himself back from electrocuting a guy to death, but that was because he’d found the newspaper article about his particular crime -- that girl had been Sofia’s age. What was he <i>supposed</i> to do?).</p><p>Batman couldn’t be everywhere at once, after all. Now that Joker had tempered his urge to always grab the Dork Knight’s attention, he was able to play the Bad Vigilante without the Good Vigilante always getting into his business.</p><p><i>Going full Dexter</i> was how Beth put it.</p><p>A nice arrangement. And he actually liked the therapist he found, Dr. Katz -- a nice little unassuming guy who didn’t judge. However, he was also a guy who wouldn’t let him off the hook, either. Joker discovered counting to five before making a decision when angry actually <i>did</i> work, by gum!</p><p>He --</p><p>Joker was loving his life.</p><p>It scared him a little, he admitted. It had been too suffocating and intense at first, these new feelings. For a man who’d always hovered around the emotional age of about three, to suddenly look at a woman and have his emotional age hurtled against his will to his actual age was disorienting to say the least.</p><p>But not when Beth turned over on the couch like this, locking eyes with him. Now it was easy. Now it was home. “Mmmm. I’m sleepy, but I could lie like this on the couch forever. But <i>pobre de mí</i>, that doesn’t pay as well as actual work.”</p><p>Joker yelped, “Work?” <i>The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis</i> was one of the few classic sitcoms Bethany hadn’t seen yet, so Joker and she had a marathon the week before, flying through the full episodes uploaded on YouTube. Beth had broken down cackling everytime Maynard G. Krebs squeaked in fear at the mention of work, and so Joker had taken to echoing his catchphrase every time it was mentioned outside of the show.</p><p>His ploy worked: Bethany shook with laughter, eyes squeezed shut as she threw her head back.</p><p>All of a sudden that hot rush of what Joker now recognized as <i>tenderness</i> overcame him. Thundering, unrelenting happiness. He looked at his girl, his precious, darling girl, his life, as she laughed. He couldn’t help it, he was lost in a dreamlike fog and he crushed her tight to his chest, and said, “God, I love you, Jeannie.”</p><p>She stiffened in his arms just as he realized what he said. The fog cleared immediately.</p><p>
  <i>Ohhhhh boy.</i>
</p><p>Panic pounded in his chest, and his forehead broke out in a cold sweat. The world swayed a little. Why...why had he said that blasted name? That name.</p><p>Of course. Of course he knew why. Beth looked just like her. He realized this now his memory was back. She looked just like Jeannie, the woman who probably never even existed. Jeannie was obviously just a strange conjuring of his mad mind, a symbol of that last spot of goodness in him that meeting Beth brought to the surface.</p><p>Right?</p><p>Of course right. No, he didn’t know why he’d imagined this Jeannie in such detail that she seemed very real on the dark, rare occasions she came to him. He didn’t know why when he thought of her, he remembered their fake life together in such devastating detail.</p><p>But there was no way she could have been real. Joker had been a hard bitten gangster assassin before his first dip into acid...right? Yes, right. He -- yes, that’s who he’d been.</p><p>Jeannie was just one of many false memories that filtered through his funhouse mind.</p><p>But why did Beth look just like her? True, sometimes Jeannie’s hair was blonde and lank, not a dark brown mass of curls; but then again, sometimes it was. Sometimes her eyes were deep blue, not that warm brown. But it was always Bethany’s face.</p><p>Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe he’d simply morphed Bethany’s face onto his obviously fake memory of Jeannie’s, since Beth was his real-life love now.</p><p>But, look, none of that mattered right now. Right now, he’d just called his beloved girlfriend by the wrong damn name.</p><p>He gritted his teeth, sick with self-loathing. <i>The one time you find something resembling stability, you miserable clown, and you fuck it up big time.</i></p><p>Beth was trembling now, and Joker readied himself for her well-earned fury.</p><p>But the eyes that finally lifted up to his weren’t angry. They were filled with tears, which bothered him far more. There was a strange resignation there, almost -- relief.</p><p>“So,” she said in a soft voice. “How long have you known?”</p><p><br/>
<i>Rick Sanchez stumbled into his apartment, half blind drunk from his tour of Gotham’s sleaziest bars. It was settled, then. The higher up shitheads at Ace had finally gotten their heads out of their asses long enough to figure out Rick’s credentials were phonies. He did not, in fact, have a PHd from Johns Hopkins. Their chief engineer was actually a highschool dropout and a top-notch forger.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>This highschool dropout had just perfected the formula and isolated the compound for interdimensional travel when the suits busted in and threw him out the door. When he tried buying time, insisting what he’d discovered would make it all up to them, the callous bastards told security to dump his formula, his precious compound, into the vats below.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Down swirled his dreams, a bright neon green undulating and mixing with the water coolants. Out of his reach.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Except for what was still in his head. Except for the amount he was able to pour into his flask undetected.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>He stared at that flask now. Was it really worth it? After all, even though his embarrassed former bosses didn’t want to press charges, it’s not like he had much left to live for: all his equipment, his backing, were gone. Why not risk death by sampling his brew, and find out once and for all if his theory was correct?</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Was it possible to experience with just a sip, all at once, every different timeline that led to this sip? Travel mentally through different dimensions, if not physically?</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Only one way to find out.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>As he at last threw his head back and chugged, he was unaware that in some dimensions Jack Napier the gangster and in others Jack Napier his former assistant was unknowingly doing the same on a much larger scale -- falling submerged into the vats where his life’s work swirled and swirled.</i></p><p><br/>
<b>DIMENSION J-510</b>
</p><p>Jack Napier was born John Walsh in Bludhaven. He was the youngest of two boys, the apples of his parents’ eyes. These parents were Joseph and Irene -- Irene, sweet, gentle, in the background, sipping wine as she gazed out their windows at the wisteria in the front yard; and Joseph, upright, sharp, honest, a decorated veteran who ran a small shipping yard on the docks.</p><p>The children -- the eldest being son Michael -- were raised with typical American apple pie values. While not outright rich, they grew up in a better economic class than most of their classmates. They lived in one of the few nice suburbs in Bludhaven.</p><p>Little John Walsh believed in what his father told him: be honest to your friends, family, and yourself. As he grew into a teenager, he of course felt the natural spikes of rebellion as most kids his age. He possessed a more liberal take on life than his Reagan-worshiping father. Yet when he rebelled, it was all very harmless, particularly for a white upper-middle class boy: a toke here, a shot there, a fling with a guy once or twice.</p><p>But the hold Joseph Walsh had over John's heart was strong. He was John's hero, him and Michael. He stirred enough inspiration in his son that John never rebelled beyond a certain point, until his brother’s death.</p><p>But first, let’s talk about John the comedian. He was a crack-up, from a young age. He remembered watching <i>Duck Soup</i> on TV as a child, and from there on out he was hooked on classic comedy. Whoopee cushions, fake spiders, and rubber chickens were all part of his arsenal.</p><p>Had John -- called Jack for his jackanapes -- had Jack been an only child, his father might have disapproved of his hi-jinx, worried it might derail his future. But Joseph Walsh had channeled the bulk of his paternal ambitions onto Michael. While Jack was the better student, Michael, as befitted the eldest, was the more athletic, the more personable, the more easily led by his father’s shining example. Joseph contented himself that Jack would work out all his excess energy in his youth and settle into a scientific career one day. He took more pains to mould Michael into the type of mascot the Walsh name required. A lawyer, perhaps, or a politician. Probably after a stint in the military, like Joseph and Joseph's father before him.</p><p>That stint in the military was forced on Michael when he was just a few months from graduating college, when his father caught him necking with his roommate, Daniel.</p><p>He died during a drill gone wrong.</p><p>This broke something vital in Jack. Michael had been the protector of the gangly, unconventional, and sometimes terrifyingly temperamental Jack, teaching him how to defend himself from bullies. Now, thanks to Joseph, Jack’s best friend was dead.</p><p>Jack made a scene at the funeral, condemning his father in front of friends, family, and his father’s associates. Joseph slugged him, sending him jostling against Michael’s casket. Jack turned his back on his family, changed his name to Jackanapes for real.</p><p>Jack Napier finished his degree early and was hired soon after as a lab assistant for the mysterious and cantankerous Dr. Rick Sanchez at Ace Chemicals in Gotham.</p><p>Jack, world-weary at the ancient age of twenty-two, without a friend in the world or a relation that would acknowledge him, assumed he would eventually age into drunken bitterness like his boss.</p><p>One day, however, as he trudged beside the river outside the plant on his way to work, he numbly started singing a beloved Groucho Marx tune to himself. <i> “Everyone says I love you, but just what they say it for I never knew….”</i></p><p>His head turned sharply to his left as a low breathy voice finished the second line.<i> “It’s just inviting trouble for the poor sucker who says I love you.”</i></p><p>The voice belonged to a face that smiled at him from across the river. The smile belonged to a young woman, barely twenty he’d reckon, who was small and slight and not quite pretty, but in that moment he couldn’t imagine any other face he’d rather look at.</p><p>Without thinking, without missing a beat, he went full deadpan Groucho and responded, “That’s a wise-quack. You keep your bill out of this, how would you like it if I butted into your affairs and laid an egg?”</p><p>She actually keeled over, knees buckling at his picture-perfect imitation. Her laugh was a wheeze and a machine gun spray and gloooorious. She cast him a mischievous glance out of squinting eyes and then hurried off with shoulders hunched toward the Monarch Playing Card Company nextdoor to the plant.</p><p>They saw each other every morning across the river, and every day lobbed different jokes from different comedy decades at each other. It was only after they completed the “Lambchops” routine by George and Gracie that he finally asked her name. “ ‘Say goodnight’ -- say, what is your name, anyhow?”</p><p>“Gracie’s not good enough?”</p><p>“Only if that’s the real deal.”</p><p>“I was actually named after another comedy broad: Jeannie from <i>I Dream of Jeannie.</i>”</p><p>At his look she laughed and said, “Just kidding. Well, not about Jeannie. But I was named after my grandma, not Barbara Eden, I swear.”</p><p>Jack and Jeannie married a year later.</p><p>However, Jack discovered some disturbing things about his boss, things like he wasn’t working on a stabilizing element like he’d told the owners. He was working on some witch’s brew Jack couldn’t begin to comprehend.</p><p>He got into a screaming match with the drunk tyrant, waving the notes he’d found in the old man’s face. Up to here with it all, Jack walked out, shoving stacks of papers and beakers as he went.</p><p>Three months later, Jeannie told him she was pregnant.</p><p>No other plant would hire him after word got out how he left things. So he turned to the one solace he’d always had: comedy.</p><p>He’d been at it for months at the Comedy Cellar, from even before he left Ace Chemicals. The responses were phenomenal. At first he only went to please Jeannie, who kept pestering him to go up there. </p><p>That first time he stood onstage he willed himself not to shake, or to pass out. He tried not to notice how cramped the room was with people staring at him, <i> staring at him</i>. He heard Jeannie hiss, <i>“You got this”</i> from the sidelines. Her big smile gleamed like a searchlight through the dark crowd, and he could just make out both her thumbs, pointed heavenwards.</p><p>He cleared his throat and told his first joke, his very favorite in the world. </p><p>
  <i>“See, there are these two guys in a lunatic asylum.”</i>
</p><p>His delivery was terrible -- he couldn’t stop laughing -- he tripped over every other word -- which made him laugh even more -- </p><p>And that made Jeannie start. She laughed, which when she got going always sounded like some cross between a horse whinnying and an uzi; a startling but somehow infectious sound.  </p><p>When Jeannie laughed, other people laughed, too. A lot. The audiences at the Comedy Cellar certainly did that night, and the nights that followed.</p><p>So now that he kissed Ace Chemicals' sorry ass goodbye, he had all the time in the world to devote to his budding talents. To get good, <i>real</i> good. He knew he could. He was so <i>sure</i> he had talent.</p><p>But then Jack got a call during an audition. It was Jeannie’s co-worker, Eun-Kyung. She was driving Jeannie to the hospital. She’d fainted at work.</p><p>Jeannie was a delicate girl, always frail and prone to illness despite her tough-as-nails personality. Her morning sickness was off-and-on atrocious. Now this. After hours of tests, the doctor could only prescribe bedrest. </p><p>This bedrest cost her her job at the playing card company, a heartless act that soured Jack forever to the place. She was also restricted from going to Jack’s shows.</p><p>He discovered, quite quickly, that without Jeannie by his side he just didn’t have the chops.</p><p>He wished he could say he was laughed out of auditions, but that was only the punchline to a bad joke. No one laughed, except him, failing to get through his act. </p><p>And so --</p><p>Well, you know what happens next. A naive dive into the criminal underground, only to lose the most precious person in his life and their unborn child because of an unbelievingly stupid accident, and then the Batman --</p><p>The Batman frightened him into jumping over the railing and into the soup.</p><p>Rick Sanchez’s soup.</p><p>Because it was Rick’s formula, the Joker remembered the other Jack Napiers, too.</p><p><br/>
<b>DIMENSION J-511</b>
</p><p>Jack Napier was born John Walsh in Bludhaven. Shortly before he was conceived, his father suffered a vicious head injury on a deployment overseas and returned a different creature than the reasonable font of morality and wisdom Irene had married. This man was a monster. He lost his job and lost the house. They moved to one of Bludhaven’s numerous bad neighborhoods. He beat Irene and he beat Michael, who ran away first chance he got and was never seen again. He beat his wife into an early delivery of their second child.</p><p>John Walsh was born into an environment of violence and thrived there. He felt no tug at his heartstrings hearing his mother wail as his father took out his rage on her. He couldn’t remember Michael. He laughed only at cartoons, but that was not normal laughter-- no, he laughed because of the violent thrill he felt when Chico kicked Harpo, when an anvil crushed Wile E. Coyote, when Elmer Fudd's gun turned Daffy Duck's face inside-out.</p><p>Oh, it made him feel <i>so good.</i></p><p>

It felt good when after just one too many beatings by his father, John at age seventeen left home for good.

</p><p>

Some teen hobo whose throat he slashed took his place in the Walsh home, which burned to the ground that night. The Walsh family, including young John, were all declared dead.

</p><p>
  When Sal Valestra handed him a gun for the first time as Jack Napier, that felt good, too.</p><p>
That was what took him to the catwalk several years later, confronting the Bat.</p><p>
  No former career at the plant, no fledgling attempt at comedy.

</p><p>
No Jeannie.

</p><p>
But landing in Rick Sanchez’s soup --
  
</p><p>
 An echo of her smile lingered in the Joker’s mind, a constant ache he never wanted to identify.</p><p><br/>
<b>DIMENSION J-510</b>
</p><p>Jeannie Jiménez was born the youngest of three in Corto Maltese during the revolution. Since her father León was a dock worker, the port city they lived in was then a hotbed of mafia activity. The mob joined forces with the government against the guerilla resistance fighters, filling the streets with the almost-constant sound of gunfire and the burst of Molotov cocktails. León talked a captain into smuggling his family out to America, all the way to Gotham City. Jeannie could not remember much of the tumultuous overseas trip as she’d been just three at the time. However, she'd been of delicate health ever since.</p><p>She grew up a true Gothamite amidst the Narrows’ bustling immigrant community. Her father found more work on the docks, and her mother taught English at home to immigrants studying for their citizenship tests. Anita Álvarez Jiménez grew up bilingual thanks to her own Scottish mother, who was Jeannie’s namesake (and in various timelines the younger Jeannie also inherited her grandmother’s sandy blonde hair and blue eyes).</p><p>The Jiménez  household was never very well-off financially, but still Jeannie’s weekly allowance made it so she could just afford tickets to the run-down theater down the block that showcased classic screwball comedies on Thursday nights. These became her passion, and she fell in love first with William Powell and then Danny Kaye. Their nextdoor neighbor was a retired TV critic whose bosses gifted her a widescreen television at her retirement party. This way Jeannie was able to watch reruns of Sid Caesar’s <i>Your Show of Shows</i> and <i>The Ernie Kovacs Show</i> when she was done with homework and her chores.</p><p>Jeannie never considered herself as someone who excelled at much. She was a middling student whose attention continuously wandered. She had a naturally sickly constitution, and she was certainly no great beauty. Obviously no doors to success would open for an average-looking girl of average ability just like that. She always knew she would have to work hard just to survive.</p><p>Still, Jeannie was not a bitter or gloomy person. She was a cheerful, laid back sort who made friends easily, and it was one such friend who let her know after high school that the Monarch Playing Card Company was expanding. They were looking to hire for cheap someone who could translate into Spanish the instructions on the back of their pack of cards.</p><p>Luckily one of the things Jeannie did excel at was languages, like her mother. Monarch's hiring managers were thrilled that this nice young girl didn't have a clue about haggling for a higher salary, or even know that the salary they were offering was substantially lower than the industry standard.</p><p>Jeannie was just relieved to be able to contribute something to her household. Her father’s leg had been crushed when a crate came loose from a crane that his employers successfully argued he himself had not chained properly. Therefore, his disability comp was a pittance. Her mother had to scale back her pupils to look after him. Jeannie’s sister Sabrina, twenty-four, had one failed marriage and one live-in relationship collapse, leaving her floundering with three misbehaving children. Their wayward brother Alvaro, twenty-two, was a trucker, and Jeannie seldom saw him.</p><p>Jeannie felt a pinch of anxiety that she was now apparently the principal breadwinner of the Jiménez household. There was not a lot of laughter there now.

</p><p>Still, Jeannie made the best of it. She endeared herself to her co-workers by bringing in dishes inspired by their cultures: yaksik rice cakes in honor of Korean translator Eun-Kyung, sfogliatelle for Italian Giorgrio, raspberry macarons for French Patrice, pączki for Polish Zuzanna, and more. Jeannie counted baking and cooking as two of her three main skills along with languages. Luckily one of her school friends was now a chef who happily lent her whatever appliance or recipe she needed. The treats, along with Jeannie’s big smile and horsey laugh made the small, sweaty space they had to work in next to the machinery just a little bit brighter.</p><p>But even Jeannie’s sunny disposition couldn’t help clouding over on more and more occasions. Quickly she became aware that on her salary she’d have to save probably for years to afford a place of her own or to properly care for her parents. She didn’t really date much. Although she wasn’t unattractive, and she possessed a bright, engaging personality, the guys she met didn’t kindle much in her. None of them really shared her interests, such as the Marx Brothers and Bessie Smith. At the ancient age of twenty, she wistfully resigned herself to the idea of spinsterhood. Thanks to a few disappointing encounters in the backseats of cars at prom and drive-in monster movie night, she didn’t hold sex in the highest esteem anyway.</p><p>But the thing that brought her down the most? The fact Monarch was right next to Ace Chemicals, Jeannie’s personal candidate for Gotham’s Biggest Eyesore. Not to mention that sickening stench that wafted in hourly from the smokestacks.</p><p>Even the river outside the plant she walked past every morning had an eerie sort of glow-sludge to it. She was convinced the river served as a run-off to the toxic waste nextdoor.
</p><p>But then one day she heard a man sing “Everyone Says I Love You” across the murky waters. The second she laid eyes on the lanky, unconventionally attractive mix of Dick Van Dyke and Gene Kelly, she re-thought her stance on eternal chastity and felt her cheeks flush like a schoolgirl’s.

</p><p>
She was a goner the second he did his Groucho. Cornball, but that’s the truth.
  
</p><p>
This feeling only deepened the more she got to know him. He didn’t just like the Marx Brothers; he worshiped them. He actually knew who her hero Imogene Coca was, and said she even reminded him of her -- the best compliment she’d ever received. He even shared her passion for seafood. Yes, he was the one. 

</p><p>She and Jack Napier married a year later.
</p><p>
Jeannie was laughing again, and so was Jack.</p><p>She laughed it off a year and a half into their marriage when Jack came home dazed and told her he’d had a fight with his eccentric boss Sanchez and walked out. Who needed that place? Jack was crushing it at open mic. He was a fantastic comedian, and he was sure to get spotted by a television producer or somebody soon enough.</p><p>He agreed, and got her to laugh off her own concern when she told him three months later she was pregnant. Hey, if worse came to worse and the gigs ran out, they still had her job at Monarch!</p><p>Their laughter faltered when she fainted at her desk a month later. </p><p>When she called her boss with the news, she was fired --  no frills, no softening, no apologies. Bedrest wasn’t covered in their maternity leave package, and that was that.</p><p>Still, Jack was doing great on the nightclub circuit….</p><p>...But Jeannie couldn’t go with him anymore, confined as she was to their apartment. She couldn’t prep him backstage. She couldn’t get the laughter started in the back. Without encouragement --

</p><p>Apparently the jokes stopped landing. Again. And again, they didn’t land. Their savings quickly dwindled.</p><p>She did manage a smile as they left their apartment close to the end of her first trimester. They moved from the North End to Mrs. Burkiss’s tenement, back in the Narrows. Sure it was a major setback, but they’d be all right. Jeannie always landed on her feet, and so did Jack. He winked and nudged her with his elbow, and her smile widened. <i>Sometimes</i> she wished he could take things a bit more seriously, but he always knew how to make her see the punchline to life’s doozies.</p><p>They still had each other, and Junior, too, taking up real estate in Jeannie. Any day now Jack would get his confidence back, or he’d catch the eye of a manager, a good manager.</p><p>Maybe this Louie guy, who appeared out of left field? He was too much of a fast talker for Jeannie’s taste, too much of a salesman, but maybe that’s what it took to make it out there. Jeannie encouraged Jack to meet with him.</p><p>She couldn’t know Louie did indeed have plans for Jack, but not for comedy. He put Jack in touch with two associates of his, associates who needed Jack’s expertise to get through to Jeannie’s old place of work.</p><p>No, Jeannie didn’t know all that. All she knew was that “Downhearted Blues” was playing on the radio, and hopefully that meant Junior would be born with a love for Bessie. She hummed along as she unwrapped the box with the discount baby bottle heater that had just arrived.</p><p><br/>
<b>DIMENSION J-511</b>
</p><p>Jeannie Jiménez was born the youngest of three in Corto Maltese during the revolution. Her family never made it to the boat that day. A car bomb killed her parents just as they were piling into the taxi, which left Jeannie and her siblings orphaned but thankfully unscathed on the sidewalk. They were taken in by her mother’s parents in their cramped communal quarters, a little farther from the gunfire, but still steeped in revolutionary fervor. Former sailor Eduardo Álvarez and Scottish Jeannie MacKenzie met when she tagged along on her fisherman father’s trip to South America. She stayed behind once she locked eyes with the shy, smiling Eduardo. They were both just sixteen at the time, and by seventeen she’d had her only child Anita, Jeannie’s mother.</p><p>The elder Jeannie took her namesake under her wing, playing for her old comedy albums and sneaking her out to Noche De Epoca De Oro at El Cine when the block captain gave their barrio the all-clear. There Jeannie learned more about classic Latin comedy than her Gotham counterpart. She adored Cantinflas, and pretended to be Lupe Vélez and María Félix when she got home, dressing up in her grandmother’s old evening gowns.</p><p>Still, the older Jeannie -- called Nana by her grandchildren -- made sure little Jeannie watched the Marx Brothers, too.</p><p>Little Jeannie hated the commotion of soldiers and gun fight outside their small apartment, and would cover her ears and whimper; but she loved it and was quickly distracted when Nana would crouch down and sing in her Scottish brogue, <i>Everyone says I love you, the cop on the corner and the burglar, too</i> as bullets rained down outside.</p><p>Somehow, her little patchwork family made it through the revolution without any more casualties. No one emerged totally unscathed, however. Jeannie had an easier time than her siblings readjusting. She couldn’t remember her parents’ deaths, toddler that she was; Sabrina coped with the memories through booze, Alvaro through disappearing into the resistance.</p><p>Jeannie rebelled by sassing off to the nuns and getting a Tweety Bird tattoo on a drunken dare by some friends. It took a stern talking-to by Nana to get her enrolled for two years of college, where she got her associate’s in English. </p><p>That equipped her for a job at the American embassy, translating for all the bigwig politicians and ambassadors there. She felt like a fish out of water, a lackadaisical guppy in the midst of all those professional sharks.</p><p>Although the revolution had moulded Jeannie into a realist, even she didn’t know just how rocky this new post-revolution government was -- that is, until her life became entwined with Anthony Stephens.</p><p>Tony was a lawyer from DC who worked at the embassy, and they had a true meet cute when she thoughtlessly ran into him outside the embassy steps. His papers scattered. He was annoyed by her laughter, but she helped him pick up every piece of paper off the ground. She liked him at first sight. He was a big teddy bear of a man whose shuffling but serious air appealed to Jeannie in an opposites attract sort of away. He was fourteen years older than her, so there was a sort of security about him that she approved of, with his big round shoulders, slightly receding hairline, and thin glasses. He didn’t have the best sense of humor, true; but there was something kind of fun about playing the clown to his straight man.</p><p>She enjoyed the rare moments she could make him laugh. He always seemed weighed down by work; even when he wasn’t at the office, and they went out to restaurants or movies, his constant frown and creased brow were evidence work was never far from his mind. So getting that husky snort of laughter out of him was always a personal triumph.</p><p>He hemmed and hawed when she discussed marriage, but with an odd air of reluctance he popped the question three years after they started dating. Graciela came a year later, followed a year after that by Jorge.</p><p>Jeannie quit her job to look after them, at Tony’s encouragement. She didn’t mind. She was never overly ambitious; she’d always happily called herself a lazybones who was content sleeping in late and pursuing hobbies around the house. To her it was heaven when Tony left for work and the kids ambled in half asleep and cuddled with her until late morning. She taught them to cook as she played some of the old comedy albums Nana had given her as a wedding present.</p><p>The kids were absolute maniacs and nothing on earth brought her more joy than them. Gracie was a goth soul wrapped up in a pink bubblegum layer of girliness; she squealed and jumped for joy whenever they saw spiders on their walks, scooping up bugs into the sleeve of her Hello Kitty sweater. She always waved ecstatically and sang out <i>“Hola, fantasmas”</i> when they walked past the cemetery. Jorge was a serious lad who at the age of two was already committed to the life of a guerilla war fighter. <i>“Rah! Rah!  Revolución,”</i> he’d babble at the toy cops and soldiers his father had bought him, knocking them down like a rampaging Godzilla. While a part of Jeannie winced remembering his Tío Alvaro, she was pleased he was a little rebel that would surely spit in the faces of dirty cops and liars someday.</p><p>It was a good life, up until it wasn’t.</p><p>Tony never changed throughout their almost seven years of marriage. Family life certainly didn’t seem to make him happier; in fact, his doleful air of worry increased, until desperation peered out of his haunted eyes. Whenever Jeannie asked what was up, he shrugged and gave the same response: “Oh. Work.” She thought she understood; life at the embassy was never easy, she knew.</p><p>In all honesty, he barely seemed to notice the kids. He always acted faintly surprised they existed, and treated them with a strained, oddly formal kindness. He loved them, she knew, but he acted almost <i>afraid</i> of them. The few times Jeannie talked him into joining them at ball games or trips to the park, he eventually zoned out. He’d sit there next to them in the stands or at picnic tables, staring into the distance, his eyes unfocused and dark.</p><p>Once everything came into the light, Jeannie realized she’d lived deeply in denial with Tony. She should have known something was deeply, deeply wrong. But after so long living under the shadow of revolution -- the weeks close to starvation, the street executions, the night raids -- Jeannie saw in Tony the semblance of stability and she clung to him.</p><p>All until the day Tony burst out of the bedroom running late, swearing under his breath, out the house in a hurry. The third cell phone he owned that he left behind started to ring in the bathroom -- the phone Jeannie didn’t know about.</p><p>Jeannie stared at it, unsure what to do. Her head pounded: an affair. He must be having an affair. Why else this third, secret phone? Indignation screamed in her. When it rang a second time, in her fury she flipped the phone open with such violence she almost broke it.</p><p>“<i>What?</i>” She didn’t recognize her own voice, husky as it was in her anger.</p><p>The reception was poor. “<i>...Tony?</i>” Jeannie started. <i>A man? I guess it’s possible Tony’s sleeping with a man. Why not? I’m not a schoolgirl with the nuns anymore, I know what goes on.</i>
</p><p>The voice continued. “<i>Tony, are you there? Look, bud, things are getting real hairy back in the states. The FBI’s been snooping around again. They know you met with Falcone, or at least they have their suspicions. We need to cover our tracks with the dope….Tony? Tony, are you there?”</i></p><p>Jeannie opened her mouth once or twice. Swallowed some spit.</p><p>Then before she could think better of it, in her own voice she mewled, “Uh….”</p><p>The voice went silent for half a second. Then: “<i>Shit.”</i> A click and the call ended.</p><p>The phone fell from her hands.</p><p>Falcone. Tony was meeting with Carmine Falcone. The man whose name was a scourge in the streets of Corto Maltese. The man who was trying to bring back mafia rule, bring back the same sort of regime that killed her parents, killed countless parents and children during the revolution.</p><p>Hardly aware of the world around her, of Gracie and Jorge squabbling over toys and whining for lunch, Jeannie tore the house apart.</p><p>She’d never noticed the false wall in the back of the shower. Why should she? She was such an idiot.</p><p>Money. Drugs. Papers, so many papers.</p><p>“Mamá?”</p><p>Jeannie lifted her head. She realized she was crumpled on the floor, crying.</p><p>She gently pulled her daughter to her, motioned for toddling Jorge to join them. “We’re getting out of here, <i>bebés</i>,” she whispered.</p><p>It was difficult, since Tony worked at the embassy. But she had to move fast. Whoever was on the other end of the phone must have figured out through process of elimination who had answered. </p><p>A call to her old boss, about fifteen different transfers, two hours of waiting, then a knock on the door. Only when the man held up his badge to the peephole did she allow in the FBI agent. </p><p>He was a nondescript fellow, yet Jeannie stared at him as if he were the grim reaper.</p><p>Jeannie handed everything over: everything, everything.</p><p>With them went all love she’d ever felt for Anthony Stephens. She saw now that that love had been mere lazy indifference on maybe both their parts. All she felt for him now was a queasy loathing and heavy disillusionment.</p><p>Her blood ran cold as the FBI man’s face paled the more he read.</p><p>At last he quirked an eyebrow at her and cleared his throat.</p><p>The agent was clipped, severe. “You and your children need to leave, ma’am. We’ve got to get you to the states.”</p><p>Jeannie’s hands shook. “Is it...is it really that bad?”</p><p>He took off his shades, massaged the bridge of his nose. “Afraid so, ma’am. We’d suspected your husband for a long time, but even we didn’t know how many dealings he had with Falcone. And by the looks of this, he might have been trying to doublecross even Falcone. And Falcone always catches his rats, ma’am.”</p><p>She closed her eyes. <i>“Tony, idiota,”</i> she whispered.</p><p>“Yep. And as you are well aware, Falcone is an especially tough customer. He’s not above targeting families.”</p><p>Jeannie nodded, numb. She knew. She’d heard tell.</p><p>“Luckily the Wayne Foundation in Gotham works with Witness Protection for cases like this. We’ll get you set up as soon as possible.”</p><p>As soon as possible meant packing the kids up with only the chance to say goodbye to Nana with a quick peck on the cheek and a letter stuffed in her hand at their door. Weeks of recording her testimony followed in small, airless rooms. They stayed a stressful month in a hotel by the FBI headquarters in Corto Maltese. She let the little TV in the room distract Gracie and Jorge so she could dodge their many questions, as she tried to sleep in-between interrogations. A month passed, a month of wondering  where Tony was, wondering if Falcone had been tipped off about her yet.</p><p>At last came the night before they headed out to America. Only then did the agents brief her on their new identities.</p><p>And thus, Bethany Ramos settled into an unexpectedly nice house for her troubles, along with children Sofia and Benicio. The kids were young enough then that she could convince them they were all play-acting, and they mustn’t break the rules by saying their names from before. </p><p>Five years later, and she privately mourned that they no longer remembered the names Graciela and Jorge.</p><p>Five years later, and here she was in nursing school of all places. She’d initially balked at the idea; what the hell did she know about nursing? The FBI eventually talked her around, pointing out that because Gotham was always in need of more medical professionals, the Wayne Foundation was always willing to cover the full tuition for those willing to take it on. After all, getting another job translating might tip off Falcone.</p><p>She was surprised she did so well in her new profession. She guessed childbirth and helping Nana take care of injured resistance fighters growing up paid off.</p><p>She didn’t know where Tony was. She didn’t care.</p><p>All she knew was the nightly terror of hearing what she thought was a twig snap outside her window and oh god they’ve found us; no, it was a cat; oh <i>mierda</i>, was that guy wearing sunglasses in the hospital parking lot watching her, or had she gone crazy?</p><p>Then one day the city descended into chaos. Overnight, Gotham City became a lawless hell, run by those costumed <i>maniacos.</i></p><p>Yet, oddly enough, that’s when Bethany finally found her serenity. That serenity was lying in the rubble, stunned and amnesic, but looking for all the world like an unconventionally attractive mix of Gene Kelly and Dick Van Dyke.</p><p><br/>
</p><p>All this Bethany whispered to him now, huddling with him on the couch as the night stretched on. She apologized for keeping it from him, but with everything going on...she just wanted to forget and start over….</p><p>“How long have you known? You are the Joker, after all. I guess I should have known you'd have your ways.”</p><p>The world spun around and around in the Joker’s mind -- all the worlds he didn’t understand, but were somehow starting to coalesce.</p><p>He dimly remembered -- as if peering down a long dark tunnel --</p><p>He was sitting on a stool in the lab, guilt and fear prickling the back of his neck as he read the notes in Rick’s journal.</p><p>
  <i>
    <b>“If someone ingests the interdimensional chemicals, his consciousness becomes one with the subject's consciousness from every universe that led to this moment. He has lived every possibility, every random turn that led to ingesting the chemicals. These timelines can vary and differ wildly, but the subject lives all of them, simultaneously.”</b>
  </i>
</p><p>That was as far as he got before Rick caught him, and their screaming match ensued.</p><p>He hadn’t understood those notes then, and in the chaos that followed, none of his memories were clear enough to ever properly recall them.</p><p>Now, though --</p><p>Joker was convinced he’d somehow always known. After all, he’d learned enough about the compounds in the acid to reverse them, giving whoever fell into them amnesia. Didn’t it make sense that in their natural form, those chemicals would do the opposite: bombard the victim with <i>all</i> their memories, from all the different timelines that led them to ingesting the chemicals?</p><p>These made up his multiple choice past, which drove him insane.</p><p>He knew what he had to do.</p><p>He heard himself ask, “Do you want to be Jeannie Jiménez again? Do you want to live free of fear for your life, for the kids?”</p><p>Along with being a comedy buff, Bethany also loved her horror films. She thought now of Black Phillip in <i>The VVitch: "Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?”</i></p><p>She chuckled bitterly. “You know the answer to that.”</p><p><br/>
</p><p>After she eventually went to bed with head hanging down from the weight of her secrets, Joker planned his swan song.</p><p>A week later, Falcone’s goons heard their boss suddenly start to laugh uncontrollably in his office. When it wouldn't stop, and only got higher and madder, they broke down the door.</p><p>His cold dead face smiled back at them with that tell-tale rictus grin distorting his features. Without his guidance, his gang eventually splintered, and all plans for Corto Maltese and vengeance collapsed.</p><p>In Venezuela, accountant Albert Floss was found with a similar grin by his landlord, his corpse lying in bed, smiling, smiling at the ceiling. When the police investigated afterward, they found behind his shower wall an escape bag, including a driver’s license with his picture but with the name Anthony Stephens.</p><p><br/>
</p><p>Bruce neglected his cocktail, his eyes on the stage. Five minutes before the curtain went up.</p><p>He had planned to go after Joker for Falcone. He couldn’t let Joker revert to his old ways. He had to be vigilant.

</p><p>It was Harley who stopped him. She'd worn a brown wig and hired someone to pretend to mug her. When Batman caught up to them and put a gentle hand on the cowering woman's shoulder, she'd pulled off the wig. "Ta-dah!"</p><p>“Bats, I can’t believe I’m sayin’ this, but...I think killing Falcone was Mistah J's grand finale. I can’t tell you why, but it’s just a feeling I get, ya know? Look, just…” she looked down, thinking. “Just, give him a chance, all right? Pounce on him if he messes up, but...let him have what I now have with Ivy. You always wanted to redeem us all, right?” A smirk and a shrug.</p><p>He wasn’t convinced. And once he heard Joker was opening up a comedy club, and would inaugurate proceedings…</p><p>Here he was, at Casa de Yuks. The venue was not as ostentatious as Bruce had expected, given the Joker’s typical aesthetic. True, there was the cardboard cut out of the Joker outside, and funhouse mirrors in the lobby. But no exploding whoopee cushions, no Joker Toxin in the air vents.</p><p>Bruce scanned the tables around him. He wasn’t surprised it was packed; what surprised him was the lack of people with weapons hidden in their coat pockets, the lack of eyes full of vengeance.</p><p>Bruce had heard rumor that Joker was now a bit of a vigilante himself; human traffickers and sex offenders Bruce had been tracking down for months suddenly disappeared, and word got out the Clown Prince of Crime's hand was the one pushing them out of sight. </p><p>Apparently the Joker had his staunch group of supporters now. Worrying. Very worrying.</p><p>Bruce spied at the front table Joker’s wife and the children. Bethany Ramos had become Jeannie Jiménez, and then a week after that Jeannie Napier. Bruce still suffered mental whiplash from that one.</p><p>The kids were still called Sofia and Benicio; those were the names they’d practically grown up with, after all. Sofia was dressed in a bright pink ball gown with equally pink spider earrings. Benicio looked scruffier in his little tux, tugging at his tie.</p><p>Jeannie’s gown was a little roomy, Bruce noted. She was drinking water, and her hand was over her stomach.</p><p>Bruce swallowed.</p><p>He had no time to reflect, however, as the curtain was going up. He had no time to reflect on the irony of the situation. All the efforts he’d made to contain the Joker, first to redeem him and then to defeat him, once and for all, might be entirely moot. </p><p>Now here Bruce was, sitting alone at a table in his greatest enemy’s comedy club. The audience clapped, sincerely clapped for the Joker.</p><p>Joker made his way center stage, made an exaggerated show of blowing kisses to his audience, bowing, bowing. Bruce saw a flash there in his eyes as the spotlight narrowed in on him. It was a flash of panic which Bruce hadn’t seen in him before. His eyes sought out the woman in the front with her children, with her hand on her stomach.</p><p>Bruce heard her hiss, “You got this!” He saw both her thumbs go up, pointed heavenward.</p><p>But only Joker saw her smile, like a searchlight in the darkness. The kids waved at him.</p><p>The panic left and he smiled back.</p><p>“See, folks, there were these two guys in a lunatic asylum….”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Yeah, yeah, the Joker probably doesn't deserve redemption, but it's gotta happen in at least a few of the countless timelines, right? I'm just weak for Joker x Jeannie, and now Joker x Bethany, apparently. Consider this an expansion of the universe I created in the far more upsetting and in-character Muscle Memory.</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>